Elenco Capacitor Substitution Box Soldering Kit | Great STEM Project | Soldering Required

This is one of the easiest kits I've ever done, if not the easiest.All of the capacitors were a little wild but I didn't need extremely tight tolerances for the kind of work I do anyway. I laid them out on a piece of paper in order to make assembly easier.After I installed all of the capacitors and began soldering I realized why everybody was having trouble soldering onto the board, the pads need to be cleaned before soldering or the solder doesn't want to stick to them very well.I gave them a good scrubbing with acetone and the rest of the kit was a snap to assemble. The conformal coating they use is really good stuff and the acetone didn't even thin it in one spot.There were numerous complaints about the quality of the board and that must have been fixed because I didn't have any trouble with traces lifting, they aren't copper though.As stated they are made for resistors so the spacing is a little weird, that said I found that the nail clippers I use to trim the excess component leads off of the back side of the board was it a good size to bend the capacitor leads around for spacing.The wire they send is just copper wire, I substituted it for some test lead wire that I have here, and they did not include the jumpers to go from the switch to the common on the selector switches.All in all this was a good kit and I think I'm going to buy a second one to do my own graphics and capacitors in so that I have a box that will do bigger sizes.It would be useful to have a capacitance meter on hand to set the knob orientation but it isn't necessary. The switches are open frame and you can see the wiper right through them so if you simply look at the switch and follow the trace that is set to before you put the case together you'll know where to orient the knob.-----Update-----I did indeed do a custom mod on the second one. I used GIMP to make a new legend and put my own caps in.Parts layout got a little wierd and I ended up with 2 caps on the backside of the board (a dab of hot glue here and there so as not to lift the pads). These two projects were really fun, and I have practical decade boxes now at a great price.

The instructions were clear, and, after soldering components, works well. especially helpful when trying to find the right capacities to add to magnetic loop antennas (amateur radio) to obtain resonance

This kit was easy to assemble with good overall instructions. It is very rugged and profesional in appearance when finished. Great tool for subsituting common value capacitors into a test circuit to evaluate results. I could've built something like this myself easily, but it would be too much hassle for the price and would not look as professional. The instructions do tell you that the lower value capacitors will be somewhat off in their values due to capacitance in the test leads. I donlt know any way around that other than to directly try individual capacitors in the circuit (avoiding this is a key reason I purchased this). The values were actually more accurate than expected considering capacitors themselves have a +/- 10% tolerance. The uf range was mostly dead on along with much of the pf range when measure with an LCR meter with the greatest error being the 100pf capacitor reading 130pf. This is just fine for my purposes though.The only problem with the kit was that it included 2 331 capicitors and no 221 capacitor. While the 221 was easily replaced by a capacitor from my stock and costs very little, the kit should still include all the correct value components. It loses a star for this. I would recommend using a capacitance or LCR meter to set the knobs in the correct position. I tried to follow the instructions for indexing the knobs without a meter and they were both wrong. I don't rule out operator error here, but with a meter I am sure they are set correctly. All in all, a great tool for the elctronics workbench and very easy to solder/assemble.

Well tested the capacitors that came with it and they were all over the place in values and low voltage, so accuracy I guess is lacking. But the box and PCB board and switches are great. I substituted better capacitors for the ones in it and went from 50 volt to 1000 volts on the low capacitors and from 100 volts up to 650 volts on high side. Substituted banana binding posts for the two leads and then hi-potted it to 1000 volt thru out. So a great little kit to start from if your using it for vacuum tube circuit repairs. I hate the lead free solder and used my own.

I am not regretful with my purchase and overall I ended up with a useful capacitor substitution box but the kit is not the best.First it should be noted that it is highly recommended to own a capacitance meter in order to build this kit or it will be impossible to position the knobs and it will simplify finding the different capacitors.Note also that the quality of the capacitors is not great and that their value is way off (more than 20%) in some cases especially for the smaller ones. In order to make the box useful I did replace the capacitors that were more than 5% off and replace them with new ones (almost all the small values).The crocodile leads are not the most exciting for a piece of "lab equipment" and pulling on cable directly solder to the board is not a great idea so I replaced them with binding posts.Finally, the kit itself is not a particularly pleasant. The board from the Resistor Substitution kit has been reused and the spacing for the capacitor is not ideal. Two ugly jumpers, are also needed.

Good quality. Easy to assemble. Probably can't buy the parts for the price of a kit, which is why I ended up with so many. On some I did use larger alligator clips. On each assembled unit I took value readings with high quality ohmmeter (5-1/2 digits) and made measured value charts that I taped to each box.

these tools provide convenience.

The capacitors in this kit do not seem to be of very good quality. Also, they look very low voltage too (not marked right). Since I have to assemble this thing, I just may use my own caps with known voltages.The box is nice though and is almost the same as one I had back in the 1980's.[UPDATED]After having a chance to use this for some projects, I'm now giving full 5 stars! I had forgotten just how useful this sub box really is.Oh, I ended up just using the caps that came with it. I tested each one before putting in and they were right on the mark. So I figure, I'll only replace a cap if it blows.This box is worth it.

This is extremely bad practice as it doesn't teach beginners to read and understand schematics properly plus it appears they are just using the same board as their Elenco Resistor Substitution Box. This is very slack. The holes on resistors are usually further apart so you have to force and spread the leads on the capacitors to match the holes of the resistors. This was a pain as capacitors sit higher than resistors so you have to make sure you get the leads down as much as possible otherwise it can become very hard to close the lid. Elenco should be ashamed of themselves for skipping and and trying to save money by not marking the board with the proper schematic diagrams.

I assembled the caps and I have to admit that some of the capacitors are not within the spec.

Facil de armar y amar. Sin embargo los capacitadores con Banos velores estaban mas alla de las tolerancia. Mejor revisar todos antes de armar El equipo.

Primero compre uno armado y venía muy mal ensamblado y con pistas levantadas, luego compre esta versión para DIY y no me mandaron el switch, por desgracia lo deje guardado mas del mes y cuando lo abrí me di cuenta de este problema. Compre la otra version para resistencia y en ese venia todo en orden.